LINCOLN IN 1857.

From a photograph loaned by H. W. Fay of De Kalb, Illinois. The original was taken early in 1857 by Alexander Hesler of Chicago. Mr. Fay writes of the picture: "I have a letter from Mr. Hesler stating that one of the lawyers came in and made arrangements for the sitting, so that the members of the bar could get prints. Lincoln said at the time that he did not know why the boys wanted such a homely face." Mr. Joseph Medill of Chicago went with Mr. Lincoln to have the picture taken. He says that the photographer insisted on smoothing down Lincoln's hair, but Lincoln did not like the result, and ran his fingers through it before sitting. The original negative was burned in the Chicago fire.

CHAPTER XVI

LINCOLN'S IMPORTANT LAW CASES-DEFENCE OF A SLAVE GIRL THE MCCORMICK CASE-THE ARMSTRONG MURDER CASE-THE ROCK ISLAND BRIDGE CASE

ABRAHAM LINCOLN's place in the legal circle of Illinois has never been clearly defined. The ordinary impression is that, though he was a faithful and trusted lawyer, he never rose to the first rank of his profession. This idea has come from imperfect information concerning his legal career. An examination of the reports of the Illinois Supreme Court from 1840, when he tried his first case before that body, to 1861, when he gave up his profession to become President of the United States, shows that in this period of twenty years, broken as it was, from 1847 to 1849, by a term in Congress, and interrupted constantly, from 1854 to 1860, by his labors in opposition to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, Lincoln was engaged in nearly one hundred cases before that court, some of them of great importance. This fact shows him to have been one of the leading lawyers of his State. Between ninety and one hundred cases before the Supreme Court of a State in twenty years is a record surpassed by but few lawyers. It was exceeded by none of Lincoln's Illinois contemporaries.

Among the cases in which he was prominent and of which we have reports, there are several of dramatic import. viewing them, as we can now, in connection with his later life. One of the first in which he appeared before the Illinois Supreme Court involved the freedom of a negro girl called Nance. In spite of the fact that Illinois had been free

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since its admission as a State, many traces of slavery still remained, particularly in the southern and central parts of the State. Among the scattered slaveholders was one Nathan Cromwell of Tazewell County, who for some years had in his service a negro girl, Nance. He claimed that Nance was bound to him by indenture, and that he had the right to sell her as any other property, a right he succeeded finally in exercising. One of his neighbors, Baily by name, bought the girl; but the purchase was conditional: Baily was to pay for his property only when he received from Cromwell title papers showing that Nance was bound to serve under the laws of the State. These papers Cromwell failed to produce before his death. Later his heirs sued Baily for the purchase price. Baily employed Lincoln to defend him. The case was tried in September, 1839, and decided against Baily. Then in July, 1841, it was tried again, before the Supreme Court of the State. Lincoln proved that Nance had lived for several years in the State, that she was over twenty-one years of age, that she had declared herself to be free, and that she had even purchased goods on her own account. The list of authorities he used in the trial to prove that Nance could not be held in bondage shows that he was already familiar with both Federal and State legislation on the slavery question up to that date. He went back to the Ordinance of 1787, to show that slavery was forbidden in the Northwest Territory; he recalled the Constitution that had made the State free in 1818; he showed that by the law of nations no person can be sold in a free State. His argument convinced the court; the judgment of the lower court was overruled. and Nance was free.

After Lincoln's return from Congress in 1849, he was engaged in some of the most important cases of the day. One of these was a contest between the Illinois Central Railroad, at that time building, and McLean County, Illinois. This

They formerly belonged to the Lincoln Memorial Collection of Chicago. Accompanying the ink stand is a letter saying that Mr. Lincoln wrote from it the famous house-divided-against-itself" speech.